“And what do they watch me for?” asked Tom, with heightened colour, but looking at Cale with an air of something almost like defiance, though his heart misgave him the while.

“Nay, Tom, that is a question you should be able to answer better than I. If there be no cause of offence against you, why, then, do as you will, and go where you will.  Yet men have ere now been haled to prison and to the gallows for sins that have been less theirs than those who set them on.”

Tom’s face was very grave.  He was not afraid of adventure and peril; but the thought of prison and disgrace—­to say nothing of a felon’s death—­seemed to paralyze the beating of his heart with a numb sense of horror.  Truly, if this sort of danger dogged his steps, the sooner he was out of the country the better for himself!

But he would see Rosamund once more, and spend one happy day in her company.  If he went out into the streets, it had better be after the summer dusk had fallen, when Cale took his daughter home.  He agreed, therefore, to remain within doors all that day; and he was not sorry he had done so when presently he observed two of his enemies slowly prowling past the house, scanning the windows furtively, and talking together in very earnest tones.

Could it be possible that these men had been of the company travelling with the troopers that night?  Could they have got wind in some mysterious way of what was afoot, and have followed to seek his ruin?  Tom had reason to know that these men bore him a grudge, and had threatened revenge, and that they hated Lord Claud equally with himself.  Harry Gay had warned him that they were dangerous fellows; and Tom had not lived all this while in London without being well aware that there were ways and means of obtaining information, and that every man had his price.  If they suspected him to be concerned in the robbery, they would take every possible means to hunt him down.

Tom set his teeth as this thought came to him.  To be the victim of the spite of a party of low villains, who were only fit themselves for the hangman’s halter!  The thought was not to be borne.  Better, far better, the life of the forest with Captain Jack!  There at least he would be free of this persecution; and perhaps the day would come when he should find his foes at his mercy, and take his revenge upon them!

A very little brooding of this sort sufficed to set Tom’s hot blood boiling.  He had no wish to join himself with freebooters and law breakers; but if they hunted him beyond a certain point, he would not hesitate to fly to those who would give him safety and a welcome.  He had heard plenty of tales by this time of impoverished gentlemen, disbanded soldiers, falsely-accused persons of all sorts, who had been forced to fly to the freedom of the forest, and live as they could.  Since the days of bold Robin Hood there had always been outlaws of the better, as well as the worse, sort.  Tom had no wish to throw aside his code of morality and honour; but if men would not let him live as a peaceable citizen, they should suffer for it!